


READ. THE. WARNING LABELS!!!

by M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)



Category: Original Work
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, POV First Person, Shippy Gen, Trick or Treat Exchange 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-17 15:51:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16098839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/pseuds/M%20J%20Holyoke
Summary: FIVE TIMES that customers buying potions at a magic shop didn't bother listening to me when I told them to read the warning labels . . .. . . and ONE TIME that they did.





	READ. THE. WARNING LABELS!!!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alunsina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alunsina/gifts).



**1: Purgative**

The customers don’t read the warning labels.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I remind them to read the guidance notes on the back of each potion bottle whilst I’m counting out their change at the till— _they don’t listen_.

Then, when it all goes wrong, they come back into the shop and try to convince the boss that it was _my_ fault. Well, it was never my fault, and the shop’s owner knows it.

Why, just the other day, an elderly gentlemen bought a purgative. I guess he was feeling his own mortality and wanted a potion to cleanse his spirit of impurities.

He didn’t read the warning label. If he had, he would have known he’d be spending the next 36 hours on his knees before the proverbial porcelain throne.

 

**2: Speed**

The running coach who bought our last in-stock speed potion was in an incredible hurry. Naturally, she didn’t stop to heed my advice about the warning label.

Now? She’s going to be doing hard time for doping. The way one of her runners broke the speed of sound at this summer’s Olympic Games was a clue.

At least she was apprehended quickly. Police officers can be fast off the mark, too, turns out. I was an expert witness at her criminal trial. That was one of my finest hours.

 

**3: Healing**

The pretty customer wanted the healing potion for her father—he needed a new liver or he’d die, and there was no donor. Read the warning label before use, I exhorted. Healing potions could be especially tricky for beginners.

Either she didn’t listen, or she wasn’t careful enough. Her father had to be taken to the hospital for surgical removal of the overgrowth tumor to his newly grown liver, and that procedure cost a heck of a lot of money out of pocket. National Insurance wouldn’t cover it, what a shock.

When the pretty customer came back into the shop to tell me what had happened, I figured she’d be angry at me. The usual dissatisfied customer stuff, you know the drill. She wasn’t, though. She said the potion had saved her father’s life, and that’s what really mattered.

 

**4: Death**

The shifty-eyed character who bought the death potion didn’t read the label, either.

He never returned to the shop to complain, so that’s not how I know. But I _did_ see his obituary in last Sunday’s newspaper, and I’m reasonably certain he hadn’t purchased that potion for his own consumption.

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it: I wasn’t _too_ sorry that that one hadn’t listened to me.

 

**5: Invisibility**

We get the occasional covert government operative at the shop. They usually read the warning labels without having to be reminded, but this one didn’t. We could hear him ranting and raving for hours and hours on end . . . but we couldn’t see him. No one ever would. Never again.

The guy whose job it was to make other people “disappear” had disappeared himself. Permanently.

I’ve started to wonder if perhaps I should seek other employment. A less stressful job for someone with 5+ years of full-time experience in a dynamic retail environment? It’s gotta be out there somewhere, right?

Maybe it’s time for me to do a disappearing act of my own. I’m so godawful sick and tired of people who don’t read the warning labels on the potions! I need a change, that’s for sure.

 

**+1: Love**

Love potions are odd little things. In books and film, you see someone drink a love potion and fall head over heels with the first person they lay eyes on. Comedic shenanigans usually ensue.

The real deal love potion is different. Here’s how it works: The person who is supposed to be falling in love drinks half, and the person they’re supposed to be falling in love with drinks the other half. Who drinks first doesn’t matter. It’s about mutuality, you know? Two to tango and so forth. True love just ain’t gonna happen otherwise.

I remind the pretty customer to read the warning label, and to my surprise, she does. Guess she learned her lesson after the whole healing potion debacle.

Holding my gaze like it’s a challenge, she uncorks the bottle of love potion . . . and right there in the shop, right in front of me, she drinks half.

Then she smiles and hands the bottle to me.


End file.
